During my senior year 5 of us got into Cornell (2 ED and 3 RD) and 2 got into Brown.
@Data10 charter schools in NC are exempt from most laws that apply to general publics including ranking, transportation and meals. NC school of math and science is literally taking the top couple hundred kids in a state with 10 million people in their junior and senior years who already are 99%tile testers (PSATs). They get like 5 kids a year into MIT and their web site said they have 74-95 national merit scholars in a single class. (most public high schools have 0-5). Anyway I rest my case.
Literally someone who went to NCSSM @Dolemite told you they don’t rank and that’s still the current policy.
I just checked UNC’s class profile and they claim 14% of UNCs 2018 incomings ranked 1 or 2 in their class. Make’s it crazy hard to get in from wake county but much easier from the rural ones.
A funny story regarding rank and UNC-CH. When NCSSM opened their doors in 1980 I guess NOT ranking students must have been rare. It seems that the Admissions Office at UNC-CH required a value for HS Rank in their system. Apparently they just filled in a random number if none existed. My roommate found this out when he was graduating from UNC-CH and applying to grad school. I’m not sure of the details but requested his records and it listed a HS Rank on it like 56% or something strange. He contacted the Registrars office and they eventually figured out that practice and he had to fight to get it removed.
I would hope with today’s environment they can handle schools that don’t rank now.
You are referencing the lawsuit data, whose data set starts ~10 years ago. During a portion of this period class rank was favored as part of the AI calculation. According to Harvard's CDS, they stopped considering rank more recently.
As stated in my previous post, NCSSM is not a charter. It is a selective public high school. A more detailed description and summary of their history is on their website at https://www.ncssm.edu/about/impact/our-history – “It was the first school of its kind — a public, residential high school welcoming students from across the state to study a specialized curriculum emphasizing science and mathematics but also offering humanities courses, athletics, and extracurricular opportunities.”
I’m not sure why you keep repeating this. I’ve stated the NCSSM is selective in each post in which I’ve mentioned the HS, and have stated multiple times in multiple posts that this selectivity is the key reason why NCSSM and most other so called “feeder” HSs have a large number of HYPSM… type college acceptances. If someone in this thread has claimed otherwise, I have not seen the post.
I never said they ranked students within the class. I only quoted your previous post that talked about elite colleges seeing and caring about the rank because state law requires the rank be listed on transcripts.
My local public HS that ranks sent 4 to Yale 2 years ago. Nothing special about the school. Maybe CCers know something special about the boys.
You’re probably right. That does agree with the much higher number who apply to UChicago, which costs the same, and has an acceptance rate that is not much higher (about 8%), since we are in Chicagoland.
According to Brown’s common data set, 25% of matriculating students reported class rank, and 75% of students did not report rank. The rank figures listed on Stanford and Brown’s websites are only for the small minority of students who reported rank, which is almost certainly biased towards applicants with higher rank. So the actual rank percentages for the full class is almost certainly lower than suggested by such reports. Acceptance rates by rank is reported on Brown’s website are below.
Applicants Who Reported Class Rank – 9.9% acceptance rate
Applicants Who Did Not Report Class Rank – 9.8% acceptance rate
Among the 25% who reported rank…
Val – 19% acceptance rate
Sal – 14% acceptance rate
Other Top 10% – 10% acceptance rate
Not in Top 10% – 2% acceptance rate
Among the minority who submitted rank ,there does appear to be a notable difference in acceptance rate between those in top 10% rank and not in top 10% rank. However, this does not mean that rank was the direct cause of the rejection. Brown holistically looks at the full transcript, considering grades and rigor, which are highly correlated with rank; rather than just plugging into a formula based on rank. Students with lower ranks tend to also have worse grades, worse rigor, worse LORs, etc. If a student with a lower rank is rejected, is that because of his HS’s reported rank? Or is that because he had unimpressive grades, rigor, LORs, essays, etc.? This makes it very difficult to draw conclusions about the chances of an applicant who has lower class rank due to attending a competitive HS or a HS’s goofy weighting system; but excels in the other aspects of the holistic application, including grades and rigor.
Back when I applied to colleges, I fit this description. I had an unimpressive class rank at a typical public HS – probably barely top 10% HS rank, if that. However, I also took a large number of courses at a nearby university that were not counted towards my HS rank, and received A’s in all of these courses, some of which were probably at a higher level of rigor than had been taken by anyone in the history of my HS. If you also considered the external courses and level of rigor in rank, then my modified rank would have been much more impressive. Stanford, Brown, MIT, and others all were able to figure out the combination of transcripts and accepted me; while rejecting several others from my HS with higher HS class ranks. While higher rank is obviously better, I wouldn’t assume that you are doomed, if you kill your rank by taking unweighted electives you enjoy instead of going for val/sal by taking the maximum possible number of maximum weighted classes.
“It was the first school of its kind — a public, residential high school welcoming students from across the state to study a specialized curriculum emphasizing science and mathematics but also offering humanities courses, athletics, and extracurricular opportunities.”
This paragraph along with your initial post was misleading, you said public (North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics is a public in North Carolina), and then corrected yourself to selective public, when you were called on it. This paragraph about welcoming students from across the state should also be viewed with some cynicism, you’re welcome as long as you’re a future National Merit Finalist!
“Back when I applied to colleges,”
I applied in the early 80s also from a public high school in upstate NY, and there was a correlation if not causation between class rank and where you got in. There were exceptions but the higher the rank the better school you got in. Some exceptions would be those who went to six or seven year med programs, ones where the SAT scores didn’t align with class rank (also back then, rank and SATs were highly correlated). Things have changed of course, as Dylan wrote a few years back.
Quotes from the first post is below (post #40). It explicitly says NCSSM is a public with selective admissions. However, you need to read the full 3 sentences of the post, not just the 1st sentence.
1st sentence – “North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics is a public in North Carolina,…”
3rd sentence – “This one has selective admissions.”
So basically if you are from a “selective” school, yes an Ivy will take more than one. If you are from the usual high school, most likely the answer is no.
We obviously have some very bright students in our school. Harvard has never accepted a student. Yale - no. I think in the last 10 years Brown has taken one. I do know that three years ago the Val was waitlisted at Princeton but decided on the prestigious honors college at our state flagship school.
The truth is that these Ivies would have been lucky to have any of these students.
It really seems, to one for whom this conversation makes the selective high schools seem like part of a machine, that except in rare cases, it is the same schools who have students getting into the top colleges. Like a conveyor belt.
"It really seems, to one for whom this conversation makes the selective high schools seem like part of a machine, that except in rare cases, it is the same schools who have students getting into the top colleges. "
Yes. But that also makes sense from a logical standpoint given how the selective high schools operate. In our county, the vast majority (in excess of 90%) of the high achieving students attend the magnet school so there’s a concentration of applicants with high test scores, interesting ECs, etc. If 90%+ of the potential candidates for selective colleges are concentrated in one area school it shouldn’t be surprising that more of the applicants from that area school are selected. There’s just a larger pool of candidates. So yes, in our area highly selective colleges will take more than one student from the magnet school but since most of the qualified applicants are from the magnet, that makes sense.
That being said, I think many of the colleges get lazy and stick to admitting students from HS that the college is familiar with. That tendency definitely gives applicants from known HS an admissions advantage.
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I think this is less about “laziness” and more about being better able to predict yield and success. That said, most T20s are looking for regional diversity so a student from S. Dakota applying to Princeton probably has a leg up on a student with a similar application from MA.
Geographic diversity at this tier is overrated, IMO. These schools are getting 40K applications for ~1500 spaces. They don’t need to take a student from SD simply to say that they did. Perhaps in that elusive and hypothetical “all other things being equal” it might be a feather on the scale, but all other things are never equal.
I agree it is about laziness. There are plenty of kids who don’t have the opportunity to go to selective high schools who would succeed at an Ivy.
Geo diversity is about more than living in WY or the Dakotas. It impacts kids from areas where hoardes apply and is a big issue in certain parts of the country. Yes, even some hs where many apply. They may be equally attracted to a kid from another part of the area or sub area. Or they simply can’t take every bright top kid from the Bay Area and neglect others in N.CA. Or CA as a whole.
It’s one of the hidden risks to expecting to get into a tippy top. It doesn’t mean the kid from a remote area is a shoo-in.
How’d this thread get so much on NCSSM?
Yes, it’s “possible” more than one can get in from an indivudal hs. But yes, it depends on whether there are other strong local kids. Sometimes, that hs across town presents a better candidate than your hs. Or sometimes, that other hs shows significant improvement and the college wants to show them some love.
Laziness doesn’t play a large part, if any. Every kid submits a full application. It either does the trick or not. Even top performing kids don’t necessarily put forth a good app. Your app is under your control. The quality of others’ apps (or institutional needs) is beyond your control.
Certain high schools do prepare kids better, overall, have GCs and teachers who know how to write LoRs, and can exert some influence over the student. That’s not to say lower performing hs can’t do the same.
a U. Chicago coach who’s been there for a long long time, is quoted talking about getting in recruited athletes. Chicago no longer is this rigid in recruiting (they used to be like MIT, but no longer).
"Reclaiming the Game"2003 by Bowen and Levin “If one of her potential recruits ranks something like twelfth in a good school and Chicago may be truning down the fourth and fifth-ranked, students, they are unlikely to take her candidate.” Page 68.
chicago no longer is this limited (same coach still there) but human nature says ranked kids applying to Ivies likely undergo similar scrutiny.
“They don’t need to take a student from SD simply to say that they did.”
Well they definitely say in their press releases and student profiles how many states and countries. If you’re from South Dakota, you’re competing with other students from South Dakota. Once a school hits 50 states, well it’s going to be tough to not keep it as 50, maybe once in a while, 47 or 48. The number of countries, again, these universities are not going to show they’re less popular by decreasing the number of countries by a lot. The very first line in Stanford’s profile is number of states and countries, in 2017 they had 48 states, now they’re at 50. They did reduce the number of countries from 68 to 63, I give them credit for that.
“Every kid submits a full application. It either does the trick or not”
what tricks are these - having a lot of money or power, being an urm, first gen, an athlete, legacy, having the last name Obama or Kushner (just to represent both sides)? I do think though that once these slots are taken up, they get into a substantive discussion on applicants and do a pretty good job with getting the best, but they’re humans and will make mistakes.
Yes, Ivies will definitely take more than 1 student from a public school because it happens every year in nationally ranked high schools including the one in my area.
Now, if you are an Asian male from either CA or the NY tri-state area, and Harvard has already accepted a lacrosse recruit, a fencing recruit and an ISEF grand award winner, you are not likely to get accepted even with perfect scores/grades and a #1 class ranking. Could they squeeze in a 4th? Sure, but they have no incentive to since they have so many other “buckets” to fill.
My kids attended a public non-magnet HS in a flyover state. Each year the graduating class was around 300. From my son’s class one went to Princeton, one to Harvard, one to Columbia, one to Brown, and one to Amherst. My daughter’s class sent one to Harvard, one to Stanford, one to Duke, and 2 or 3 to UPenn.
This HS ranks its students and there is high correlation between rank and acceptances. Of those listed above, all were in the top 3% in rank.